5.3.1 The Debate over Ethics

As explained when discussing human evolution morality does not mean its general connotation of distinguishing right from wrong. Instead, during emergence, morality refers to a socially fabricated behavior triggering biological moods, that can override more primitive responses of reflex. Even then, for humans to evolve biology receptive to moral influence does not make individuals innately moral. Natural human behavior is constrained to provide group benefits, and group beneficial behavior is inherently moral. But individuals only strive to increase options. With 85% of human behavior learned it is the learning process itself that determines how individuals behave. If a human child were raised by wolves that child would not exhibit moral behavior as humans understand it. Equally crudely, many elements of civilized society, all through history, have not exhibited behavior that is moral in the generally understood sense.

The process by which civilized humans distinguish moral right from wrong is called ethics. One task of the Theory of Options is explaining how humanity originated ethics, only we must be careful what is meant. Like natural grammar, ethical ideas evolved over tens, or even hundreds of thousands of years, but its systematic study began in Greece. Ethics comes from the Greek for ethos (custom, way) and when we study ethics, we study people's correct or expected behavior. Since Greek times ethics has been among the most widely studied human attributes, though ironically, nobody has ever produced anything conclusive about it.

So, what is ethics?

Ethics is the manner by which humans regulate individual behavior in civilized society. One might say that humans regulate behavior by laws, which is true. But laws cannot apply in every instance, and all the time. So, ethics is how we train people to behave, or teach them how they ought behave, even if no laws apply in some circumstance.

Most historians consider that ethics arose this way. Primitive tribes do not really need ethics. For a cohesive group tribal law is sufficient regulation, while harsh conditions of primitive life, where stupid or selfish behavior could lead to extinction of the tribe, limits options of behavior anyway. But as civilization developed and agriculture created abundance, people began to live beyond the confines of tribal groups. So they required more universal methods of regulation than tribal law could provide. Ethics enabled people to carry tribal codes "inside their heads". So as tribal life diversified, people could adhere to original teachings even after they traveled outside their own group. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" (Shakespeare). "Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you" (Kant). And "he that diggeth a pit shall fall into it" (the Bible) are examples of simple ethical homily, in that they teach people how they ought to behave, even in the absence of specific laws or constraints regulating behavior.

Deciding how it suits society for people to behave is the functional problem of ethics. Without knowing how ethics arose or why it acts as it does, everyone recognizes that society requires ethics in order to function. Kant taught that without ethics society could not work, no man could trust his fellow, and so on. Modern theorists teach how family, government and commerce all require ethical norms to function. While for those who believe that humans are just animals at their basis, striven to Darwinian survival and procreation at the expense of less fit competitors, the use of ethics moderating such needs into civilized behavior is obvious. So for all these reasons, every society throughout history has devised for its members something we might term ethical codes. These are a system of teachings, conveyed as reinforced learning, of how society expects its members to behave.

Teaching and reinforcement of ethics begins in childhood. Teaching is by example, discipline, or religious or moral tale. The reinforcement is granting affection for good behavior, and reprimands for bad. For adults, teaching continues as religious or ethical doctrine, while reinforcement is by punishments and rewards in the workplace, in sport, and so on. Rewards confer praise, honor, privilege, and acclamation. Punishment involves reprimand, deprivation of freedom, wealth, or in extreme cases, deprivation of life. But whether they exist as laws, rules, teachings or norms, the ethical codes of society instruct people how to behave. There is even a branch of ethics called casuistry, which teaches that ethics should be a search for a set of perfect codes. The Medieval and Catholic Church, Islamic societies and others have devoted much study to casuistry, and tried to create societies in which all behavior is regulated by codes.

Yet ironically, no mater how hard people search for a set of perfect ethical codes, that is not the central problem of ethics!

The issue of ethics is that regardless of what society does the system of punishments and rewards that society enforces for behavior is not the only one. Instead, every individual, even a child, learns that deep within the psyche exists another code of ethics, called ethical feelings. These are positive feelings about worth, happiness and fulfillment, and negative ones of shame, guilt, or remorse. And these feelings are very powerful; "for love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave". These feelings give the individual an intimate sense of right and wrong, plus they also punish or reward the individual for behavior, only not in the same manner, or for the same reasons, that society requires. If anything, ethical feelings can be often override judgments society makes.

So, where do such feelings come from? And what is the relationship of ethical feelings, arising within, to the ethical codes which society imposes from without?

Explaining the true relationship of ethical feelings generated within, to ethical codes imposed from without has become the great ethical problem of humanity. And though ethical problem (no one calls it that) has never been satisfactorily solved, there has been much debate over ethical issues. Philosophically, the relationship of ethical codes to ethical feelings is usually explained one of two ways.

1. In absolutism, the existence of ethical feelings in individuals is seen to prove that ethical values exist as absolutes in the universe. This is the only way to explain universally held human feelings such as awareness of an innate sense of good and evil, or that life is form of moral test, or an almost universally held conviction that there exists a creator-deity controlling and judging all human actions.
2. In relativism all ethical ideas, even intimate feelings, arise from the moral teachings of whatever culture the individual happens to be raised in. This is the only way to explain how it is that while some feelings appear universal, every ethics, and every belief system, has a local flavor, depending almost entirely on local culture, teachings, and social environment.

Yet neither of these systems, absolutism or relativism, explains the central problem of ethics, which is the discordance between the feelings and codes. In absolutism, the usual explanation of discordance is that people's moral ideals have become corrupted, and if individuals return to a system of pure beliefs, discordance will disappear. This is the religious argument and it has had an enduring impact on all ethics. Only for a system based on universal, absolute beliefs, historically these beliefs have fragmented in pockets of relativist disagreement over what the pure system is. This has allowed relativists to contend that all ethical codes are ultimately contrived, either by religion, society, politicians, or other philosophers. When relativist philosophers discovered that codes were contrived and out of concordance with individual feelings, they tried to discover a set of naturalistic codes, both free of contrivance, but with which individual moral aspiration would naturally align. Yet despite 2,500 years of search, finding the true basis of a naturalistic ethics, like calling up spirits from the vasty deep, has been easier to claim than to prove. So just as absolutism never uncovered a universal set of beliefs everybody could commit to, relativism has never produced a believable system of naturalistic ethics. Nor have relativists agreed themselves what the 'naturalistic' basis of a system could be.

How then does the Theory of Options explain ethics, and ethical feelings?

Firstly, the age-old divisions between relativism and absolutism, or codes and feelings, are not just categorical, but reflect neurological divisions within the brain. Feelings, as a sentient quality, arise within the middle brain, but thoughts which trigger feelings, arise within the higher cortex. Especially, thoughts, which both create and arise from codes, themselves are complex constructs of grammatical language. So thoughts must in all instances be contrived, just like any statement of reason is contrived. Only because they are contrived it does not mean that ethical concepts do not exist for a purpose. Or, if people get rid of one set of codes another set will simply replace them. In this, ethical codes are like governments. There are good and bad governments, just as there are good and bad ethical codes. But there is no naturalistic government in an anarchist sense, that every individual will be happy with it. Similarly there is no naturalistic ethics, in the sense that every peccadillo and idiosyncrasy will be accommodated, or that we can prove by some physical law that this is a natural system, as against some other precept. Ethical systems, like laws or governments, arose outside of nature to meet civilized, social, cultural needs. They also arose, again like laws and governments, to enforce some moral consensus and "rules of engagement" on widely disparate individual values. Moreover, while the contrived nature of ethical codes shows their relative value to culture, the motive of ethics, its feelings, arise from processes coded within the human genotype, which also shows a universal quality to ethics. So in this sense the earlier relativist and absolutist arguments are both partially validated, but only to an extent of illustrating the futility to debating this issue forever. Rather, we must accept that ethics has both genetic and cultural elements and move on to explain the true origins of these.

The previous chapter explained how the sentient basis of feelings philosophers would one day term 'ethical' arose in prehistory. And feelings, no matter which etymological (meaning of words) label we happen to give them, are a product of biology, so they require an explanation of evolutionary fitness. If we wish to explain their origins, it makes more sense to call them physiological mood than ethical feelings, so we understand what we are trying to explain. Again, if we are trying to explain such feelings in terms of individual fitness, it probably has more do with facilitating encephalization and learning, which is a fitness advantage, than anything to do with 'ethics' as the term is understood in a moral or cultural sense. Yet when in early history wise men of the tribe first examined the possible significance of these feelings, the conclusions they drew were not about encephalization. They instead considered that the feelings existed for distinguishing ethical 'right' from 'wrong' in a newly interpreted religious sense.

So suddenly, we do have to change the subject. We are discussing feelings whose origins are biological, but whose first interpretation of their significance was ethical and cultural. So in the previous chapter we discussed the 'origins' of feelings in their naturalistic, biological sense. But here we discuss the more complex problem of understanding the 'origins' of how the significance of these feelings have been interpreted in human culture, in an ethical sense.

So, what is the 'origin' of ethics in this interpretive sense?

Why say, were humans at the early hunter-gatherer stage of history able to resolve choices without recourse to ethics? Yet at a later stage of herd gathering, agriculture or a more settled tribal life did ethical explanations of choice suddenly need to arise? (My historical cause-and-effect might not be exact. I am taking Biblical and Greek Legends as humanity's venerated sources for tracing the rise of ethical concepts as social life becomes more settled, and tribes grow into nations. Historians will want to correct this.)

In a way, why humans require ethics in an agricultural age, but not in an earlier hunter-gatherer age, is at the core of the Theory of Options. The answer is that humans use ethics for resolving certain type of choices, which are unconstrained choices. If a creature is afraid, in pain, hungry, or otherwise responding to instinct, its choices are constrained. It still has choices, all animals have choices, but they are not free from other factors. In another circumstance, a stone age human might have choice over say, how to divide up a carcass. Yet because this activity is still dictated by tribal ritual, this choice too is not truly unconstrained. Yet humans in civilization often face choices whose consequences do not bear on survival, well being, comfort, custom, tribal taboo or any matter of reflex, ritual, or instinct. If anything, humans often face dilemmas such that they must think of a reason why, from several equal choices, one might be superior to any other!

This is why ethics did not begin until the age of agriculture. Hominids, like all higher animals, faced choices for millions of years. At first, choices were resolved by reflex, with the strongest reflex taking precedence. Later, during emergence, humans sublimated choice by reflex to choice by learned behavior, to give choice broader possibilities. Choice was then achieved through tribal codes, controlled by social regulation. Tribal codes are the behavioral regulating mechanism of all Stone Age peoples, even today. With the advent of agriculture, though, this "naturally evolved" system was thrown into chaos. Agriculture could support such a large population that tribes broke up, and tribal custom and taboo became first diversified, then subsumed into larger social structures. But the crucial problem was one of abundance. Even though Stone Age tribal life is "post-Darwinian" it is nonetheless a struggle for survival. It is still a closed system of responses, operating within Darwinian constraints. Despite that tribal peoples no longer evolve by natural selection, tribes still operate within Darwinian equations, the basic of which is a limited supply of food. So although for Stone Age tribes there is no biological modification, there is still natural selection. Tribal behaviors are "survival strategies". There are choices in tribal life, but none outside the overriding constraint that from a single mistake, life of the tribe can be extinguished.

Agriculture changes that. Today, we are rediscovering to our peril the truth Stone Age people knew; resources are limited. But in the first flush of agriculture, and since then, resources often appeared unlimited, especially for those people emerging at the 'top' of newly evolved social structures. Customary obligations about how to divide a carcass, say, do not constrain behavior of individuals ensured a lifetime supply of food. Once food is abundant or natural peril diminished, non-conforming behavior will no longer determine basic constraints like continued group existence. In fact, once life is placed outside the overriding constraint of a "struggle for survival" over limited resources, a new range of constraints have to be invented, for a person to determine which things in life are important at all.

Ethics, in a way, is the invention of the new system of constraints. Ethics does not teach people how to survive in the wild, nor does it teach people a cultural equivalent to a Darwinian "survival strategy". Instead, ethics teaches people how to constrain behavior when no apparent constraint exists. A tragic illustration of this problem concerns when today's Stone Age peoples are confronted with a "white man's abundance". Tribal laws, no matter how felicitously adapted to survival in the wild cannot cope with the problem of individuals facing unconstrained choices. Ethics teaches people that even if an option like access to alcohol once not available is now abundant, there are other factors governing choices.

The most venerable interpretation of the factors governing choice has been the religious one. Basically this teaches that no matter how unconstrained choices might appear they are still judged, and individuals are still accountable for them. And even when we try to go beyond the religious interpretation, endemic to any rational ethics is the concept that we choose in our actions between a moral 'good' and 'bad'. And the human obligation is to make wise, morally 'good' choices. So apart from a direct religious interpretation of moral need, which all societies historically made, what other factors lead humans to interpret ethical needs, ultimately as a simple choice between 'good' and 'bad' actions?

It was the ancient one, for humans the perennial one; the problem of adaptation. During human emergence hominids faced a problem of how to direct physical evolution, so that the species could better adapt to changing circumstances. A solution was to evolve in a direction in which the maximum number of instinctual constraints on behavior could be substituted for acquired constraints. Millions of years later, in the age of agriculture, a new problem emerged. This was that acquired constraints, in forms of custom, ritual, habit, and tribal taboo, were themselves now undermined. Nature had adapted humans to be creatures who could adapt their behavior to changes in the environment, but after the last Ice Age, humans themselves seized the initiative of change. From a stable natural environment they created by invention an "Agricultural Age", which burst the last Darwinian constraints. But if humans could do this, what other "Ages", what other inventions and discoveries, might they render?

Most important, what changes to a program of "maximum adaptability to all possible changes" would humans now require? One might devise a set of rituals to regulate agricultural life, as surely as rituals can regulate tribal life, but this might only repeat the old problem of growing natural fur to protect against cold. A natural fur will protect against cold, but it cannot help if people prefer a warm climate, or want the option to live under either warm or cold conditions. Similarly, hunting ritual will guide a nomad's life, but what if people become agrarian -or go to live in cities?

Now comes the crucial question on which all ethics is based. We know that humans can adopt a set of behavioral codes we call "tribal laws". These adapt humans to a particular life style, or set of environmental constraints dictated by nature. But these are always particular codes, suitable for particular constraints. Yet once humans learn agriculture, once they learn invention, architecture, animal husbandry, navigation, trade, commerce, and so on, humans are no longer dealing with single sets of circumstances, dictated by nature. They are dealing with multiple circumstances, which nature could not have predicted anyway. Facing diverse circumstances the "tribal laws" break down. The tribal ethics prove insufficient, just as today, tribal peoples dumped among civilization's abundance prove unable to cope with the "multiple choice" moral options civilization presents.

So is there another way? Is there a universal set of codes applicable in all circumstances regardless of how inventively humans reduce other constraints on their lives? To push this argument to its logical conclusion, can there be a set of codes valid even if humans achieve maximum possible invention? Even if humans created a circumstance so abundant that it would free them of all natural constraint, could there still be a set of codes, adaptable enough to provide guidance even in this extreme situation?

Today we know that the ancient religious teachers believed that there was a way. To show people "the way" ancient wise men created a new ethical concept. This eventually moved away from the tribe, or particular rituals such as food gathering, and asked; 'what in life is required of the individual, facing any possible circumstance?' The answer was that there is a 'Greater Good' to which every individual is committed. The wise men concluded that the author of moral needs is not the requirements of the tribe, or even requirements of life. Instead, there is a great Universal Moral need, to which all humans are answerable. So life for humans becomes a test of how adequately each individual responds to these moral demands.

See it this way. If the natural environment millions of years ago was guaranteed to be perpetually stable, there would have been no need for hominids to evolve beyond ape-like forms. Millions of years later, if the cultural environment were also assured to be stable, settling, say, on tribal life, there would also have been no need to evolve ethics. And this applies today. If somebody wishes to "drop out" and go to live among bushmen, that person will not require ethics. Tribal law is enough, because right or wrong will be constrained by the survival chances of the tribe. But most people do not choose to live that way. In fact, historically, humans once faced this very choice. They could have stayed nomads. They could have remained tribal peoples and barring further major changes to the environment, it might have lasted that way for an eternity. But humans did not choose this option. Essentially, they wanted the natural constraints removed, preferring to replace them with ethical constraints of human making.

Thus, ethics exists as a solution to the problem of maximizing options. Humans enjoy maximum options when all further constraints on behavior become moral ones. But humans do not see this all at once, as one big clearly explained picture, the very first time when they confront the problem. If anything, the Theory of Options, the first to explain ethics this way, does not emerge in human history until after the scientific age has begun, or chillingly until half a century after humans discover nuclear power. So just as evolution of ethics was always a progression of events, as civilization developed, it is also one today. Take the case with food. At a primitive level, hominids had to learn how to control instinct, to distribute food among the group. This created primitive morality mechanisms, which rewarded the triumph of sentiment over instinct with gratifying feelings. But eons later, in the age of agriculture, humans faced a new problem. Now there was abundance of food for some, but it did not entitle people to gorge themselves, or neglect the needs of the less favored. How to distribute food in this circumstance required a fresh morality mechanism, more complex than the instinct-into-sentiment one. This new mechanism came not from the primitive consciousness, but the rational one, which invented the religious idea to handle the more complex requirement.

Only to continue the thesis, today humans face acute new problems over the ancient moral quandary of how to best distribute food. If anything, all our existing moral mechanisms, such as religion and philosophy have become overwhelmed by the dimensions of the new problem. But this is the point. Ethical complexity is not static, but arises in response to the intricacy of options faced. In this humans have been fortunate. When they faced simple options such as to eat food on the spot or consume it later, they developed a moral mechanism that could cope. As civilization grew and faced fresh choices, such as over whether to keep slaves, humans developed ethical mechanisms that eventually coped too. Ironically, the biggest ethical crises come today. Humans now face choices about overpopulation, nuclear war, or environmental destruction for which none of the previously developed mechanisms are adequate, so new ones must be found. The Theory of Options is one new mechanism, which might better cope with the new ethical complexities. But there are no guarantees of this either, so perhaps even deeper understanding of ethical significance is required again.

Yet for thousands of years one explanation has achieved reasonable alignment of ethical codes with individual moral feelings. This was the religious explanation of ethics. So how does this work really?